Timothy Chapman
03/27/2023
Monster Jam made its annual trip to the Payne Arena in Hidalgo Texas featuring eight different monster trucks competing in various competitions over the course of three days.
One of the drivers that got to compete in Hidalgo was 2022 Monster Jam World Finals Racing Champion Brandon Vinson representing team Grave Digger. The World Finals is the biggest event that Monster Jam has with the best drivers all season getting the opportunity to compete for the championship.
Brandon Vinson (Grave Digger) won the Monster Jam World Finals XXI Racing World Championship in a dramatic finale at Camping World Stadium in Orlando.
Vinson entered the night as the 10th-fastest qualifier and defeated Cynthia Gauthier (Lucas Stabilizer), Cory Rummell (Megalodon), Tyler Menninga (Grave Digger) and Ryan Anderson (Son-uva Digger) en route to his first Monster Jam World Finals Championship win, According to MonsterJam.com.
Before becoming a driver of Grave Digger, Brandon Vinson began his career as a crew chief working on monster trucks such as Grave Digger The Legend and Son Uva Digger and won the 2017 world finals racing championship as a crew chief for driver Ryan Anderson in Son Uva Digger.
He said winning the championship as a driver felt so much sweeter.
“Winning as a crew chief was great, but nothing compares to actually winning a world championship yourself. Being behind the wheel of that truck, going through the stress, the pressure of all the 24 drivers that are out there competing. … “That was the biggest thing I have accomplished in Monster Jam was getting that world finals racing championship,” Vinson said.
Things came full circle for Vinson with getting the ultimate test of his driving abilities by going against the driver he used to work for. He said getting to beat Ryan Anderson for the world finals racing championship last year was a great accomplishment, especially since he considers Ryan to be the best driver in Monster Jam.
“It made it that much better that I beat Ryan because I consider Ryan the best in Monster Jam. Everybody asks me all the time, ‘who do you think is the best?’ It’s Ryan. Everything that he’s done, everything that he does, how he moves around the track, how he knows how to jump this, how to jump that, he’s the best. So for me to beat the best, I was the best that night,” Vinson said.
Crew chief for Brandon Vinson’s Grave Digger Josh Woodard said he’s been a crew chief for six years and has won championships with other drivers and although he was not Brandon’s crew chief for last year’s world finals, he enjoys his current partnership with him.
“Brandon, he’s a fun driver, he loves going out here, putting on a great show. We like to make comments back and forth with each other, what’s going on with the truck or how we feel like running today, stuff like that, but for the most part we’re just out here having fun and we just love every minute of it,” Woodard said.
Brandon Vinson is not the only driver on the Monster Jam circuit to go from a crew chief to driving a monster truck. Driver of the Dragon monster truck Coty Saucier said it was never his ultimate goal to become a driver, but he believes that before he could drive he needed to understand how the truck works.
“Well I felt like I needed to work on the trucks to learn the complete ins and outs of everything before I ever stepped in the truck, that’s just my way of thinking I guess . I started literally from the bottom helping loading at the end of the night and then it turned into, tiring up trucks, just helping out changing transmissions, just get myself in the mix learning the ins and outs,” Saucier said.
Monster Jam will be returning to the Payne Arena in Hidalgo Texas from September 15 – 17
To learn more about monster jam you can visit their website at monsterjam.com
